Loretta Lynch Is Going To Be Attorney General

Unless the Senate starts listening to Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III(R-Twelve Oaks), Loretta Lynch is going to be the new Attorney General. The way you know this is that her confirmation hearings have gone round the bend and ended up at a place where their real function is to beat up on Eric Holder. This, of course, is extraordinarily gutless. The way you know what they're really about is that, today, the Republicans turned the Senate Judiciary Committee into an impromptu episode of Fox And Friends.

Late in the day, Jefferson Beauregard went off on how Holder failed to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, and said he didn't like what had happened to "his Department of Justice" under the control of the two Negroes. Sessions's Department of Justice was an interesting place.

During Sessions' confirmation hearings in 1986, Figures alleged that Sessions repeatedly displayed racial insensitivity around him. 'I was regularly called 'boy,'" Figures said. When asked by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who called him "boy," Figures said, ''Mr. Sessions did, one or two of the other assistants.'' One of those Assistant U.S. Attorney, Edward Vulevich, said Figures' charge wasn't true and called Sessions "a man of utmost integrity." Reached in Mobile, Alabama, this week, Mr. Figures told ABC News, "I stand by my testimony and I don't know if anyone has questioned the veracity or the truth of it. And I don't really care."

Sessions then handed off the chair to Mike Lee, the konztitooshinul skolar from Utah, who wanted us to know that Loretta Lynch's confirmation hearings should not necessarily concern Loretta Lynch.

"I have a different view," he said. "If we were running a company, and looking for a new CEO, or more appropriate for a general counsel, probably want to know what somebody's view of organization would be. We're kidding ourselves if we say we shouldn't ask a nominee about problems existing in the Department of Justice."

Lee also pointed out that, while questioning Lynch yesterday, she failed to answer his hypotheticals, even when he "made them simpler." The custodian is going to need a steam-cleaner to get the smarm off the floor.

Anyway, here came Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote, which is not, as their lawyers will remind you in sternly written letters, a voter-suppression outfit, but a ballot-security group, even though every ballot-security measure it advocates results in keeping the ballot secure from brown people, students, and other groups inconvenient to the Republican party. Engelbrecht has been the Lady Liberty of the IRS "scandal," and the committee today let her fly her gonfalon proudly in the face of the government tyranny of making sure you're not a phony, tax-dodging wingnut welfare charade.

"I'm here today because I was targeted by the government for daring to speak out," Engelbrecht told the committee. "I'm here as one of thousands of Americans who have become living examples of a kind of trickle down tyranny that is actively endorsed by the current administration and rigorously enforced by the Department of Justice."

Well, you go, girl. Tell us again what social welfare service True The Vote does that would qualify it for an exemption under 501 (c) 4, Never mind, keep hammering in those nails.

Following her House testimony in 2014, Engelbrecht says her attorney was contacted by the Justice Department's Public Integrity Division about interviewing her in connection with the IRS targeting scandal. Differences arose, however, over whether lawyers from the department's Civil Rights Division should participate. At the time, Engelbrecht said, the Civil Rights Division was "filing objections and fighting tooth and nail to prevent True the Vote from intervening in the Texas voter ID litigation." Months later, she said, "we met the Department of Justice in court again, but this time they were representing the IRS in a lawsuit True the Vote filed against the IRS in 2013." The suit was later dismissed, a setback Engelbrecht attributes to the loss of IRS computer hard drives containing millions of government emails, including those of Lois Lerner, a top IRS official implicated in the case.

Actually, it was dismissed because a federal judge noted that the IRS dumbassery that spawned this paranoid effort to protect the rights of people to scam the tax system on behalf of political propaganda had ceased. Engelbrecht hss continued a profitable career of showing her stigmata to wingnut gatherings -- including, now, the Senate Judiciary Committee. The whole thing is a sad exercise.

Ah, you say. But what about Fast And Furious? Benghazi? All the other conjuring words? Well, the committee had those covered, too. They've invitednoted anti-vaccination crusader,lonely heroine of the Resistance, andnoted computer incompetent Sharyl Atkisson to share her tales of the blows she has tried to strike against the empire.

One more thing: Jonathan Turley has become an unbelievable tool, sitting there giving respectable cover to some really dingy people with some really dingy arguments and some extraordinarily dingy motives. Under the tongue-bathing of Sessions, Turley got to anoint the Engelbrechts and Atkisson with some Founder ointment. Apparently, the president is King George. He also had a slow-dance with Lee, who asked him if he would have accepted Lynch's answer to the hypothetical he'd posed in one of his classes. Turley, of course, said he probably wouldn't have taken that from a student. Turley is going to need one of those Silkwood showers when this is all over.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.